Gnut was particularly concerned by the US government's refusal to cede to the demands of a petition calling for the construction of a Death Star.

The White House said that the more than $850,000,000,000,000,000 expected build cost was prohibitive.

But Kickstarter user Simon Kwan fears that Gnut's Death Star funding drive could actually be "an ingenious plot by the Empire to use the power of the people against us", and so he has countered with his own project.

"We can't let this new Death Star go unchallenged, so we're raising funds to form a new Rebel Alliance and construct a fleet of proton torpedo armed X-Wing fighters to take down this new Death Star," said Kwan.

His goal is to raise a slightly more modest $11m to finance a prototype of an X-Wing - the space fighters featured in the Star Wars films - and also train a pilot.

The project so far has 138 backers who have pledged $102,008 with 49 days still to go.

"If George Lucas produced Star Wars IV: A New Hope for $11,000,000, we figure we can finance a prototype of an X-Wing and train a pilot," said Kwan.

Building a full squadron of X-Wings is expected to cost $4,485,672,683, which is the same as the worldwide box office total to date for all the Star Wars films plus The Clone Wars TV series.

The project expects to start taking applications from budding Rebel fighter pilots after it secures the full funding amount.

As with the Death Star, the project will be open source to bring down the costs, and Kwan wants to ensure all X-Wings have Apple iPhone and Siri integration.

But in the 'risks and challenges' section, the project adds: "As with the Death Star, our biggest challenge is making sure Kickstarter and all of our Backers know that this is also a joke.

"We LOVE the Death Star Kickstarter project, and just wanted to post the logical challenge project to it.

"In the hilarious and unlikely event that we come close to reaching our Funding Goal, we'll pull the plug on the project.

"We might have an actual engineer on our team, but Simon has no clue how to build an X-Wing. Well, nothing more complex than a Lego model, anyways."